Deaf to car alarms: Why four in five just walk on by

We have become so used to the sound of car alarms going off that four out of five people fail to acknowledge the noise, a new study has found.

Only 17 per cent of people walking past a car with its alarm going off reacted to the siren, with not a single person taking any action.

Of the people who did acknowledge the alert, their only response was to briefly glance at the car as they walked past.

Crime stopper? We have become so used to hearing car alarms go off that most people just walk past whenever they hear one

Dr Ian Walker, a lecturer in traffic and transport psychology at the University of Bath, said: ‘We learn to ignore any sound that isn’t followed by a meaningful event. We hear car alarms but never see a car being stolen afterwards and so do not associate the sound with theft.

‘Alarms are only significant to the owner of the car. They may feel the fact they disturb everybody else is a fair price to pay given how highly most people value their cars.’

For the experiment, by insurance company Aviva, alarms were set off in London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester, and the response of pedestrians was monitored.

People from Cardiff were the most responsive, with 25 per cent acknowledging it. Glaswegians were the least responsive with nine per cent.

Mike Day, 29, an office worker from London, said: ‘If I hear an alarm I never go to check it. They go off at the slightest thing, so you know it won’t be genuine. It’s become such a common sound I think people tend to block it out, like traffic or aircraft noise.’